126 THE FARMER OF TO-MORROW 



of the Alleghanies, yet we can dismiss this 

 area as of national importance because it 

 feeds only one mouth in every fourteen. The 

 South is devoted to cotton, and its corn, its 

 next most important crop, is not sufficient to 

 feed the mules that cultivate the cotton. The 

 Mountain and Pacific States, though occupy- 

 ing an area equal to one-half the country, 

 rank in economic importance with New Eng- 

 land and the Middle Atlantic States. Thus 

 the farm area producing a surplus of food 

 is narrowed down to a region occupying, so 

 to speak, the solar-plexus of the map. It in- 

 cludes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, 

 Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Mis- 

 souri, and the eastern half of Oklahoma, 

 Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. It was 

 in this region that settlers, under the Home- 

 stead Act, found permanent homes, because 

 of the natural advantages of soil and climate. 

 Every available acre, susceptible to production 

 under the sunshine-and-rain rate of cultivation, 

 was actually producing food in 1910, and it 

 is in this "solar-plexus" of the map that we 

 find farms most highly capitalized on the 

 principle that man is first and foremost a con- 

 server of his own labor and chooses that land 



